High Hopes for New Treatments at Fragile X International Conference

ST. LOUIS, July 21, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- Breakthrough research
findings describing potentially significant new treatments for
fragile X syndrome (FXS) will be presented to nearly 1,000 family
members and professionals at the 11th International Fragile X
Conference in St. Louis July 23-27. More than 200 speakers will
describe the latest treatments for symptoms related to the mutation
of the Fragile X gene and powerful new medications being
researched.

Multiple early trials are under way of drugs that show great
promise for improving the cognitive, anxiety and behavioral
problems associated with FXS.

"Many new treatments target correcting the mechanisms that cause
FXS, in contrast to supportive treatments that address various
symptoms that dominated past research efforts," wrote Elizabeth
Berry-Kravis, M.D., Ph.D., in the National Fragile X Foundation
Quarterly (http://www.fragilex.org/html/journals.htm)
journal.

Recently featured in Time (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818268,00.html)
magazine, Fragile X research is being carried out in all corners of
the globe. In the United States, Congress recently appropriated
nearly $2 million for continued funding of FXS-related public
health activities via the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The National Institutes of Health will fund nearly $25 million in
FXS research this year.

The biennial international conference is preceded on July 22 by
National Fragile X Awareness Day, proclaimed by Congress in 2000.
FXS, the world's leading known cause of inherited intellectual
disability (formerly referred to as mental retardation), is also
the most common known genetic cause of autism. Scientists are
studying FXS as a possible model for better understanding the role
that genes play in autism. FXS today affects more than 100,000
Americans. Another one million are carriers of the Fragile X
mutation and at risk of passing it on to their children and
developing the newly discovered conditions of fragile X-associated
tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS), a Parkinson's-like condition
causing tremor, balance and memory problems in adults, and fragile
X-associated primary ovarian insufficiency (FXPOI), a condition
that can result in premature menopause for women as early as their
late teens.